It arrived at Christmas, a gift from my son and daughter-in-law. Only available from Halfords at the mo', it included free installation - which left me slightly nervous as to how that would turn out

I thought I'd recce the local Cambridge branch. I spoke to Carl, the senior fitter, who impressed me with his confidence. The fitting was booked - but when I arrived, it was a junior fitter who took charge of my Citroen C5 (2008 Mark 3 if anyone is interested).

Two hours later he admitted defeat - he'd installed everything, but couldn't get the control unit to do more than light up; no button press produced any response. Apologising profusely, he said they'd arrange another fitting later in the week. All was left as he'd installed it.

The active aerial is in two parts - one sticks to the outside of the windscreen close to the roof, the other half sticks on the inside below the first. After 24 hours the inside part fell of the windscreen, dangling from its wire and setting off the car alarm. Worse still, the next day I drove through a short shower, only to find that the outside position fouled the windscreen wiper!

With some trepidation I returned to Halfords for a second try. This time it was Carl, and I spent an hour watching a master at work! Firstly he stripped out all the wiring left by his junior, threw more than half of it out of the car, and reduced everything to about 6 wires. Then he fitted a new aerial, which has stayed stuck and does not foul the wipers. Then he set about working out the fault, replacing each component in turn, until he isolated it as a faulty connection on the head unit bracket, replaced that, and suddenly everything worked as intended.

The head unit installed

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So now I have a meticulous installation, and a most impressive unit. Full DAB reception, no signal drop, iPod USB control, and 3.5mm jack AUX plug the latter two in the glove box. If you're considering this unit, go for it - but make sure you get a fitter who knows his job!

Jon

PS I put the problem to Jason, who replied just as I was at Halfords the second time. His reply was spot on - "it's the cable between the base unit and the head unit bracket"! (He said I was the second to come across this fault).